Ischemic heart disease is one of the world's major diseases. In recent years, endovascular therapy, which is minimally invasive, is getting more popular as a therapeutic method for ischemic heart disease. Endovascular therapy is usually practiced with X-ray fluoroscopy, and an X-ray diagnosis apparatus is used as an image-guide tool. These days a method called “roadmap” is often used. The “roadmap” is a method by which a fluoroscopic image is displayed as being superimposed in a real-time manner on an angiographic image represented by a still image. In the fluoroscopic image, a guide wire or the like that is advanced in a blood vessel by a medical doctor is rendered.
Further, one of different types of roadmap is called a 3D roadmap method. According to the 3D roadmap method, a two-dimensional projection image generated from three-dimensional blood vessel image data is used as an angiographic image. In other words, the 3D roadmap is a method by which a fluoroscopic image is displayed as being superimposed in a real-time manner on the two-dimensional projection image generated according to a movement of an X-ray diagnosis apparatus (e.g., a movement of a bed or a rotation of a C-arm). The three-dimensional blood vessel image data may be images acquired by rotating the C-arm of the X-ray diagnosis apparatus or may be Computed Tomography (CT) images acquired by an X-ray CT apparatus.
However, the images displayed on a monitor are merely two-dimensional images, according to any of these roadmap methods. Thus, when a medical doctor looks at a monitor while advancing a guide wire, for example, although he/she is able to perceive two-dimensional information, the information in the depth direction is lost. As a result, the medical doctor is still not able to sufficiently understand, for example, in which direction the guide wire should be advanced at a branching portion of the blood vessel.
Incidentally, 3D monitor technology has become more common in recent years. 3D monitors are capable of providing viewers with a stereoscopic view of images. For example, the viewers are able to visually perceive a pop-up feel and a depth-feel of the images. Methods that use special glasses as well as glass-free methods are known.